Vengeance
by bananaforscale
Summary: Three times Hawkeye takes her revenge. [Hawkeye-centric. Royai.]


_i._

She hates him.

She hates that he refuses to hold her, or look at her, or even say her name if he can help it. She hates that he locks himself away in the dark behind heavy oak doors, seeking something that she cannot hope to share or comprehend. She hates that, after everything, he has the audacity to burden her with the secret that has stolen him from her, to carve it painfully into her skin as her hate is carved into her soul. She hates that she cannot refuse him, cannot beg or scream or cry out, because all her life she has been taught nothing but silence.

His death comes as a relief. She stands in black, staring at the open grave, and with every shovel of earth that fills it a little more weight is lifted from her chest. She realizes that she is, for the first time, free. She supposes that should make her happy, but somehow it leaves a hollowness in her, a restless void that she does not know how to fill. She hears her father's apprentice shuffle his feet beside her, and shakes herself out of her thoughts. She'd nearly forgotten that he was there.

"I'm sorry," she says, "for having to rely on you for everything."

"Don't worry about it," he replies. "It's my duty as a former pupil. Please, don't hesitate to contact me at the military if anything happens."

He's too kind, she thinks, as she takes the card he gives her. He's probably shown her more kindness than anyone else ever has. She remembers lying next to him in the grass and staring at the sky when her father was too ill or too gloomy to teach him anything, laughing about whatever it was that made children laugh.

"Are you also going to judge me for becoming a soldier?" he asks wistfully, misreading her silence. "As everyone tells me, there's a chance I'll end up dead on the street like a piece of trash...but even then, if it means I'll be able to protect this country, I don't mind at all."

He smiles sheepishly.

"Sorry if I'm boring you. It's a childish dream of mine."

Her lips turn up a little, even though she envies him. She's never really had any dreams of her own, beyond the vague idea that maybe someday she would be free of silence and darkness, and someone would say her name and hold her hand, and she would be happy—but she doesn't quite know how such wonders are to be accomplished. His is a good dream, she thinks, and the void in her feels a little smaller.

"No," she says. "I think it's quite admirable. A future where everyone will be able to live in happiness..."

They pass into silence. Eventually the sun begins to dip and they turn and walk wordlessly to the house where her father died, absorbed in their personal musings. She leads him through the familiar corridors, through the dust and quiet and dimness that have been there as long as she can remember, and she thinks of her hatred, and of a world brighter than the one she has always known. The lines on her back burn, and a fire lights itself in her heart that was not there before.

"Can I trust you?" she asks softly, even though she knows the answer.

"Of course," he says.

She turns her back to him and removes her jacket, then her shirt, cradling them to her chest. She hears him protest, and gasp, and fall silent. This is her vengeance, she thinks vaguely, vengeance against the long, dreamless years she has endured and the burden she has been forced to carry. She cannot take them back, or cast them aside, but, for the first time, she can bear them not for a man locked away in his study and in his grief, but for herself—and that is enough to ease the heavy load of hate she carries, at least a little, at least for now.

A hand comes to rest on her skin, warm and trembling, and she allows herself to dream.

* * *

><p><em>ii.<em>

She sees him through the cross-hairs of her rifle, and her finger twitches.

There had been a time when she'd fancied herself in love with this man, with his bright eyes and his ideals. She had been adrift, and his conviction had become her own, had given her something to fight for, somewhere to turn that wasn't back inside of herself. She had given him all she had, what precious little she had bought with her pain, and she had thought that it would be enough to make something bright and beautiful. She had smiled for him, and her flesh had tingled and buzzed under his touch. She had been wrong.

He was a fool, this _hero_ of Ishbal, and whatever good intentions he might have had meant nothing. He hadn't known what he was getting into, or the price he needed to pay. In the end he saw his dream dissolve into blood and ash; he was forced to tear it to shreds with his own fingers, and she had made it possible with her naïve abandon and her weakness for warm hands and kind words, because she was a fool and she had followed a fool.

She watches their dream burn through her sniper's scope, and a hatred more intense than anything she's ever felt pounds through her veins. She hates the world, because it is an ugly, cruel place that chews people up and spits them out without so much as a pause or a sigh. She hates him, because he's made her hope and then betrayed her and everything he's made her want to do, because even now he snaps his fingers and death erupts in an inferno around him. She hates herself, because she knows that in the end they are exactly the same, equally culpable, equally damned.

She aches to pull the trigger. Her hatred roars for her to spill his brains into the sand. _Just this_, it says, and then maybe she can buy herself a little peace, maybe she won't have to hate herself quite so much anymore. But it's too late now. The price has been paid, and she knows too well that it can't be taken back. She'll be damned if she wastes it. So she grunts, and shifts her cross-hairs a few degrees, and a man in a toga grows a hole in his skull.

She seeks him out that day, and finds him.

"It's been a long time," she says coldly. "Do you remember me, Major Mustang?"

The grief in his eyes is his reply. She likes it. It makes her feel alive somehow, to know that at the very least he is suffering for everything he has done. She asks him questions she knows he cannot answer—why they fight, why their dreams have turned into this—and she savors his grief even as her own wells up inside of her. It feeds her hate, this little punishment. It keeps her sated enough that the desire to shoot him in the face passes quietly away, and she has the strength to put one foot in front of the other each terrible day.

Eventually, the war is over. She cobbles a makeshift grave together in the rubble. He watches, and he asks her why, even though they both know that the answer will only bring them pain.

She pours herself out to him, all the bile of sadness that fills her. He trembles, because she speaks for both of them when she tells him the war in her heart will never be over, that she can never escape or atone for the choices she has made. She asks him to free her, and he protests, but she tells him bitterly that it's the least she can do, to ensure the world will never see another Flame Alchemist. The implication breaks him; he agrees. His misery is palpable and immensely satisfying. She thanks him.

A few blurry days later she admits him into her apartment. He hands her a brown paper package of painkillers and grimly surveys the pile of bandages and the several buckets of iced water she has prepared. She fishes the remaining ice cubes out of the water. He fumbles with his gloves. She takes her shirt off, stuffs a rolled-up towel into her mouth, and kneels down, clinging firmly to the white porcelain of her bathroom sink. If she tilts her head up, she can see him in the mirror, shaking. He looks as if he wants to drop dead where he stands.

Her hatred for him flares up again, suddenly savage and blinding. Part of her wants to laugh a long, bitter laugh. He has no right to hesitate, to deny her this. He has no right to feel as terrible as he does. He has incinerated entire families without pause, and they hadn't even asked him, as she has. If he fails her now, she might very well indulge herself and kill him.

But he does not fail. He holds his trembling hand in front of his stricken face and snaps his fingers.

Flames blossom on her back. Her skin melts like wax. The pain is agonizing and glorious, and the horror on his face is equally fulfilling. This, too, is vengeance, against him and against herself. It burns as brightly and fiercely as the fire ravaging her flesh, until both are spent and burn no more.

She collapses. The towel falls from her mouth. She writhes and screams and cries as she has never has before, wordless, incoherent. She lashes out until she is empty and her strength finally fails her. When she falls silent, he pours cold water over her wounds, wraps her in bandages as delicately as he can, and helps her to bed. She feels oddly peaceful.

"I'm sorry," he says, when she wakes. His eyes are haunted, and somehow that doesn't gratify her like it used to.

She finally finds it in herself to pity him, this fellow sufferer of hers. She cannot forgive him, just as she cannot forgive herself. She cannot comfort him, cannot wipe away his sins or his sadness any more than she can wipe away her own. All she can do is brush her fingers against his hand in a gesture of understanding.

* * *

><p><em>iii.<em>

"Will you follow me?" he asks.

The sky outside is growing golden as the day nears its end. The lines of his face look deep and dark in the fading light. She is reminded that he isn't quite the same anymore. His dream isn't the same, either; the edges are frayed and there are red spatters in previously pristine places. But she decides that she will take what she can get, because he is her best chance of buying something worthwhile with the price she has paid. This time, she thinks, she will be there to guard the gift and the curse she has given him. This time, she will not let him betray her. This time, it will be different.

"Even into hell, if that is your wish," she answers.

But that isn't enough. She's already done that once, and it isn't an experience either of them are proud of. He grits his teeth, meeting her gaze. His hand finds its way to her shoulder, and his fingers dig urgently into the thick blue fabric of her uniform. His face is hard, determined. The sadness she is accustomed to has been replaced with a look of steel.

"If I fall off of my path," he says forcefully, "if I stray, promise me you'll...promise you won't let me."

She thinks of the day she saw him in her cross-hairs, and the way her finger had flexed over the trigger of her rifle. It's an easy promise to make. She nods, and he breathes a sigh of relief. He releases his grip on her and folds his hands behind his back. They watch the sun go down in silence.

In time, they settle into routine. He does what he has to; she follows him. It feels strangely natural, this new rhythm of theirs. It's steady and soothing, like a heartbeat. Her own heart beats in time with it, and that's enough to make her forget her hatred and her guilt, mostly. She can carry on, and protect him, and even laugh sometimes. It's a different story at night, when the pulse of work and duty grow faint and she begins to hear her guilt whispering within her, but she bears it, and in the morning she returns to the safety of her protective routine with renewed fervor, genuinely content with her continued penance.

She does not see the danger brewing right under her nose until it is too late.

His hand begins to brush her own more frequently than it should, and to linger there for a few moments more than necessary. Her skin feels a familiar tingle whenever they happen to touch. It becomes far too easy for them to understand each other by the most minute of gestures or pauses or looks. Suddenly, she finds it difficult to remember that she had ever wanted to paint a wall with his brains. She realizes with horror that she is once again falling victim to her weakness for warmth and kindness and determined onyx eyes, and without even her hatred to protect her, she feels small and naked and vulnerable.

She tells herself that it's enough simply to have hope again, a second chance to fight against the injustice and the cruelty that have stained her soul. It's more than she deserves. To ask for anything else would be unthinkable. She repeats these reminders like a prayer, wishing desperately that if she does it enough she will be safe.

The onslaught continues, building as steadily and dangerously as a rising tide. The brief touches become a hand caressing her cheek, lips ghosting against her own. She fights to keep her head above water. She wrenches herself away forcefully, because she has been burned before, and she will not risk his dream unraveling due to her weakness. She will not fail—not again.

It's no use. One terrible night, she stands in a white room emptying all of her bullets into a human-shaped monster and realizes with a sickening jolt that she has become utterly incapable of living without him. She almost allows herself to die then and there, but of course he comes in a blaze of fire and saves her at the last second. She holds him for a moment, under the pretense of dragging him to safety. He scolds her. She is just as angry and horrified as he is at her outburst of insanity. The force of what they have unwittingly created weighs on them like a ton of bricks.

She struggles to accommodate the feeling she can no longer ignore. The magnitude of the thing terrifies her. It is greater even than the hatred and sadness that she is familiar with. It pumps through her veins and fills every fiber of her being, all-consuming, leaving little room for anything else—and that is the most terrifying thing of all, because she is forced to rebuild herself around it, and the person that emerges is a stranger to her.

She is afraid that her strength will fail her. Surprisingly, it does not.

She watches his face twist with hatred and his eyes grow wild. His rage pours out endlessly as the object of his vengeance screams and writhes, burning under the force of his will. There was a time when she would have let him have his revenge, when perhaps she might have even gloried in it herself. But she is different now; wise enough to know that once your hate is spent it leaves you hollow and unsatisfied, strong enough to look past pain and into a dream almost forgotten. It is he that has changed her, she realizes, too distracted to appreciate the irony. With steady hands she points her gun at his back, and she lends him her strength.

It's enough. He returns to her, aching but alive and still himself, and after that he does not falter. Even as they try to make her his weakness, he stands firm, and despite her blurring vision and the life swiftly pouring out of her, she is grateful. Even as they take his sight and his dream seems lost at last, they press on together, and by some miracle emerge battered and bloody and victorious. In the aftermath she quietly wonders at this strange new strength that has carried her, so different from the hatred that has been her fuel for so many years.

The days pass. Their wounds heal, and they move on.

He looks at her across the few inches of rumpled white fabric between them as if he never intends to look away again. They say nothing; they have no words to say. She listens to his contented breathing and takes one bandaged hand in hers, running her thumb against the palm. The gesture brings a smile to his face, and soon they are both laughing without really knowing why. There may be a suspicious moisture in their eyes, but, if there is, neither of them makes any comment.

She realizes, with some surprise, that they are happy, and suddenly it no longer matters to her whether they deserve it or not. This is their vengeance against sorrow, against pain and prices paid with their souls.

It is all the vengeance she has ever needed, and she drinks it from his lips as sunlight filters through the window.

* * *

><p>.<p>

**.**

**.**

**A/N: **I like this pair, but I always thought there must be something more than just love between them, so I wanted to explore that.

I know this is rambling, stylistically inconsistent, and somewhat incoherent, but I still rather enjoyed making it. (Probably because I don't write enough to feel any real shame at being terrible at it.) Silly me. ^^;


End file.
